The Guardian is inviting readers to share their recollections of the moment they found out America had been attacked
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Five-man team took just under four weeks to complete 450-mile route, which was possible due to seasonal ice melt in the Arctic An explorer on Friday said he was “exhilarated” after he and his crew became the first people to row to the magnetic north pole. Jock Wishart and his five-man team took just under four weeks to complete the 450-mile route. They encountered polar bears and collided with icebergs as they travelled through the Arctic waters in their specially designed vessel. The trip has only recently become possible because of an increase in seasonal ice melt in the Arctic, which has opened up the waters. Wishart, who was born in Dumfries, organised the Old Pulteney Row to the pole to highlight the effects of climate change on the ice in the region. He said: “I think this is one of my greatest achievements. It was a dream four years ago but now it’s reality. Up until last night we still could not say with certainty that we would reach our destination, so we are all exhilarated and relieved that weather conditions were in our favour and we have completed our row to the magnetic north pole while it was still possible. “It is an enormous achievement, and a privilege for our team to have been part of what is one of the world’s last great firsts.” Crew member Mark Delstanche, 35, from London, had another reason to celebrate as he became a father to a son a few days ago. The group set out from Resolute Bay in Canada on 29 July in their boat, the Old Pulteney, which has runners on its underside so that it can be hauled over the ice. They slept in shifts between rowing stints and were fuelled by 7,000-calorie dry rations a day. The group saw about eight polar bears on their journey, one of which came within 5ft (1.5 metres) of them. Another challenge was floating ice that blocked their route, particularly towards the end of their journey. Wishart, who is in his late 50s, said: “We’ve been very lucky with the weather but there’s been times when we’ve been trying to find our way through moving ice floes in fog and we’re a long, long way from help. But everyone in the team has been in good humour and fettle. They are the best of the bunch. “Now I’m looking forward to a nice pint and a glass of malt whisky when I get home,” he added. Wishart has had a lifelong interest in polar exploration and in 1992 was part of the first team to walk unsupported to the geomagnetic north pole. He has also rowed across the Atlantic and captained the team that broke the London to Paris rowing record in 1999. The other rowers in the Arctic crew were Billy Gammon, 37, from Cornwall; Rob Sleep, 38, and British army officer Captain David Mans, 28, both from Hampshire. Mans, from the Princess of Wales’s Royal regiment, was selected from about 300 international entrants of a competition to find the last crew member. Cyclist Mark Beaumont, 28, from Fife, was also on board making a documentary about the voyage for the BBC. Beaumont holds the world record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe by bicycle, covering 18,296 miles in 194 days 17 hours. He completed the challenge in February 2008. Throughout the journey, the rowing crew worked with scientific research partners to provide environmental data on the impact of arctic deterioration on the polar landscape. Arctic Rowing Polar regions Scotland London guardian.co.uk
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• Many feared dead after entire wing of Abuja building is levelled • Geneva office of UN says complex was bombed Many people are feared dead after a large explosion tore through a United Nations building in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, levelling one wing of the building. Witnesses said police and emergency workers were carrying dead bodies from the building after the explosion, which happened just before 11am in the same neighbourhood as the US embassy and other diplomatic posts. Police and the wounded thronged around the three-storey building as people began to search for victims. Alessandra Vellucci, a spokeswoman for the UN office in Geneva, said its offices in Abuja had been bombed. She told the Associated Press that there was no word yet on casualties. Michael Ofilaje, a Unicef worker at the building, said: “I saw scattered bodies. Many people are dead.” Ofilaje told the Associated Press it felt like “the blast came from the basement and shook the building”. The building houses about 400 employees of the UN in Nigeria and the majority of its offices there. Nigeria Africa United Nations Global terrorism guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …ABC Tattles on NBC: Comcast Employees Top Donors to Obama and ‘Victory Fund’
August 26, 2011 No Comment
On Jake Tapper's Political Punch blog , ABC's Devin Dwyer reports that the majority owner of NBC is a major backer of the president: “Employees of media giant Comcast have contributed more money to President Obama’s reelection bid than employees from any other organization, according to a new analysis of Federal Election Commission data by the Center for Responsive Politics.” While Comcast employees gave $5,000 each to Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, “Comcast employees contributed nearly $80,000 directly to Obama for America and roughly $200,000 to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint account benefitting both the Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee, through the first half of 2011 records show.” The Center for Responsive Politics analysis found 40 percent of Obama Victory Fund contributions are coming from two very blue states: California (25 percent) and New York (15 percent), also two states where most of our news and entertainment media are located. Dwyer continued: Comcast, the nation’s largest video and internet services provider, is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns broadcast networks NBC and Telemundo among other assets. President Obama has recently spent time with top Comcast executives, attending an intimate fundraiser at the home of Comcast executive vice president David Cohen in Philadelphia in June and a private “social reception” at the Martha’s Vineyard estate of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts earlier this week. Roberts, who serves on the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, has not yet personally contributed to Obama’s campaign, according to FEC records.
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Judge agrees to inquiry into death of Alberto Bachelet, who was tortured and imprisoned for supporting Allende before the 1973 coup A Chilean judge has agreed to investigate the death of a general who was tortured and imprisoned for supporting President Salvador Allende before the 1973 military coup. Alberto Bachelet, whose daughter Michelle later became Chile’s first female president, died in prison in 1974 after Augusto Pinochet’s military convicted him of being a traitor. Judge Mario Carroza said in an interview with Chile’s Radio Cooperativa on Thursday he had agreed to review a complaint alleging that Bachelet was tortured to death. The complaint was presented by relatives of political prisoners executed during Chile’s dictatorship from 1973-1990. Carroza has already been investigating the events surrounding the death of Allende and hundreds of his allies who were killed or disappeared as Pinochet consolidated power. General Bachelet was 51 when he died. He had told his family of being tortured by the same young air force members he had trained. “They broke me from the inside,” Bachelet wrote in a letter from prison. “At one point they had morally torn me apart. I never thought to hate anyone, I always thought that the human being is the most marvellous of this creation and should be respected as such, but I found myself confronted with air force comrades whom I’ve known for 20 years, my own students, who treated me like a delinquent or a dog.” In 1972, as other high-ranking military officers were conspiring with the US Central Intelligence Agency to lay the groundwork for the coup, Allende put Bachelet in charge of Chile’s commerce agency, where he was responsible for overseeing food sales nationwide. Food and many other products were in short supply partly because Allende’s rightwing opponents held goods back to create a sense of chaos. Bachelet remained loyal to Allende to the end, refusing to endorse the 11 September coup in 1973 even after Allende committed suicide while taking his last stand in the bombed-out presidential palace. He was arrested the same day, convicted that December and survived in prison until 12 March 12 1974. Pinochet’s junta also arrested the general’s wife, Angela Jeria, and Michelle Bachelet in 1974. They were tortured in a secret jail for two weeks before leaving Chile. Michelle Bachelet returned in 1979 and served as president from 2006-2010. She now runs the United Nation’s women’s agency. Chile Augusto Pinochet guardian.co.uk
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Man was left unattended for 30 minutes while undergoing surgery to amputate his leg at a Shanghai hospital A man in China died on the operating table after his doctors fled from a fire that broke out in the next room, a hospital official said Friday. The 50-year-old man died after being left unattended for 30 minutes while undergoing surgery to amputate his leg on Wednesday night at the Shanghai No 3 People’s hospital, said hospital spokeswoman Hu Yuan. A nurse at first tried to douse the blaze, caused by a disinfecting machine that caught fire. When that failed, the staff attending the patient reported the fire and carried on with the operation. “As they were finishing up, the power went out and then they all left,” Hu said. Firefighters prevented the doctors from returning to the operating room, and by the time they reached the man in the operating room he was dead, apparently of smoke inhalation. Hu said the doctors and nurses were kept at the hospital as police investigated but were allowed to leave on Friday. “Our hospital gave them some time off. We did wrong and we are responsible for the whole accident,” Hu said. The hospital said it was discussing compensation for the family. China guardian.co.uk
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Governor of ruling Pakistan People’s party was killed by his own bodyguard early this year The son of a Pakistani governor who was killed by his bodyguard for his opposition to a controversial blasphemy law this year was kidnapped in the eastern city of Lahore on Friday, police and the family said. Four men on motorbikes intercepted Shahbaz Taseer in his car in the upscale Gulberg area and took him to a nearby street before whisking him away, police said, quoting witnesses. “Shabhaz was out with a friend when four unidentified people kidnapped him,” his brother Sheryar Taseer said. “Our family has been receiving threats from the Taliban and extremist groups,” he said, adding they could be behind the abduction. No one has yet claimed the responsibility. The governor, Salman Taseer, of the ruling Pakistan People’s party, was killed by his own bodyguard early this year after he came out in support of a woman accused of committing blasphemy. Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of four, was sentenced to death in a case stemming from a village dispute, putting Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy law in the spotlight. Shahbaz Taseer’s abduction is the second high-profile kidnapping in Lahore this month. Police are still searching for an American aid expert who was kidnapped about two weeks ago. Warren Weinstein, 70, the country director for JE Austin Associates Inc, had been working on a project in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal areas where Pakistani troops have been battling Islamist insurgents for years. Up to eight assailants kidnapped Weinstein in a pre-dawn raid on his house in Lahore on 13 August . Pakistan guardian.co.uk
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All eyes on the Federal Reserve chairman amid expectations he could signal the start of a third round of quantitative easing Financial markets were braced for a keynote speech from Ben Bernanke at Jackson Hole on Friday, amid hopes that he could unveil new measures to kickstart the sluggish American economy. All eyes will be on the US Federal Reserve chairman when he steps up to deliver his annual speech in the remote resort in the mountains of Wyoming. Last year he used the forum to fire the starting gun for a second round of quantitative easing. Not everyone is convinced that Bernanke will be able to deliver. Markets started the week confidently predicting the Fed chairman would unveil a third round of asset purchases, but expectations have been scaled back in recent days. “It is extremely unlikely he will do anything similar this year and if markets think that he will, they could be in for a big disappointment,” said Michael Hewson, market analyst at CMC Markets. “To start with, inflation is much higher, which makes it much more problematic, not withstanding the different political climate that the US is now operating in with the Tea Party movement. There is also the small matter of the three dissenters on the Federal Open Market Committee [which determines monetary policy], compared to only one last year. He can’t just ignore them and he would be foolish to do so.” Rob Carnell at ING said: “We take the view that this speech will not provide the clear guidance for policy that some market participants wish to see, and at best, will contain some general words of comfort and support, without anything material to back them up.” Stock markets are expected to mark time until Bernanke steps up to deliver his speech at 3pm British Summer Time. Oil prices were flat, the dollar slipped and many Asian stock markets were little changed. The dollar came off a two-week high against the yen but was expected to recoup losses amid expectations that the Fed would not signal strong economic stimulus. Currency analysts at Barclays Capital said: “Disappointing news is likely to favour the dollar over all other safe havens. Positive news should boost the euro and even the yen.” The pound has taken a pummelling in the past few days, dragged down by disappointing data on consumer confidence and high street sales on Thursday. “It is hoped that today’s UK second-quarter GDP revision will arrest the decline with expectations that growth will remain unchanged at 0.2%, though there is a small chance it could well be revised upwards,” said Hewson. “In any case the growth still remains better than France and Germany’s combined for the second quarter.” The UK GDP figures are due at 9.30am, but will be based purely on output and will not contain estimates for consumer and government spending. Later on it is the US’s turn for second-quarter GDP numbers, with expectations that the preliminary estimate of a 1.3% annualised rate could be downgraded to 1.1%. Brent crude was flat at $110.69 a barrel on Friday morning while US crude slipped 29 cents to $85.01. Oil prices were on track for a gain of more than 2.5% this week, with US crude gaining after four weeks of losses. US economy Ben Bernanke Economics United States Quantitative easing Julia Kollewe guardian.co.uk
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Where did the terms retro-nuevo and skronk originate? Or hip-hop? Michaelangelo Matos runs through an exhaustive catalogue of music’s phrasemakers and trendsetters Music comes from everywhere, and so do the names we call it by. There’s a longstanding cliche that only the music business needs genre names – everyone else either likes it or they don’t. That is, of course, bunk, as anyone who’s heard enough people trot out lines such as “I like all music except for rap and country” is aware. Not least because quite a lot of those genre names come from the artists themselves. Gospel, for example, was more or less invented by Rev Thomas A Dorsey . As Georgia Tom , Dorsey played jazz and blues piano before turning to the Bible for inspiration in 1932 and selling songs such as Precious Lord, Take My Hand to churches in Chicago, then across America. His group’s name was the University Gospel Singers. Similarly, bluegrass originates from the name of the country singer-mandolinist Bill Monroe ‘s backing band from 1938 to his 1996 death: the Blue Grass Boys. They were named after Monroe’s native Kentucky, “the Blue Grass State”. Glitter rock – a synonym for glam – comes from Gary Glitter, about which the less said, the better. More often, a genre name will come from a musician’s works. Free jazz comes from Ornette Coleman ‘s 1960 album of the same name; ditto blue-eyed soul, from the Righteous Brothers’ 1963 LP. The mid-60s Jamaican boogie dubbed rocksteady is named for an 1966 Alton Ellis single , while reggae followed it into Jamaican dancehalls on the heels of the Maytals’ Do the Reggay in 1968. Soca is a condensation of Trinidadian artist Lord Shorty ‘s Soul of Calypso, from 1974, while acid house, originally from Phuture’s 1987 single Acid Tracks , has come to mean anything
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